Sunday, December 27, 2015

Venezuelans were
tricked by a fascist plot into voting for the opposition in the December 6,
2015 legislative elections. This, according to an opinion
article by Hernán Mena Cifuentes published by the Agencia Venezolana de Noticias, explains the recent counter-revolutionary
electoral behavior of the people.

Mena Cifuentes summarizes
the chavista argument of the people
suffering by a media induced mass delusion: “hypnotized and confused by the
most brutal plot,” and thus “abandoning the most luminous avenue constructed by
Socialism, and following the dark an thorny path of fascism, which will throw
the people, if it does not awake up soon from this imposed lethargic hypnosis,
into the abyss of submission and domination suffered in the past (la Cuarta República.)”

Saturday, December 26, 2015

End of the year infographics by Venezuelan
funded TV channel Telesur. This new collection offers details of a broad
conspiracy against the Latin American left. “In 2015 progressive governments of
Latin America have suffered economic and political internal attacks which they
have denounced as part of a regional destabilization strategy to put an end to
the great social advances of the last 15 years,” explains Telesur.

Thursday, December 10, 2015

Government and pro-government forces have been reacting to
Sunday’s adverse elections results. Comments have ranged from the self-critical
to the blaming of an “economic war” waged by the opposition.

Thefirst reactioncame from President Maduro himself.
Right after the electoral authority’s announcement that the opposition had secured
at least 99 elected deputies, Maduro appeared on television from the Miraflores
palace recognizing defeat. He refrained however from directly congratulating
the winners and instead accused his opponents of stepping up the “economic war”
against the country in the weeks before the election. He also called for a
“rebirth” of the Revolution and told his followers they needed to “go from the
current state of difficulties caused by the economic war, to a renovation of
hope.”

On Monday, the
presidentmet with his cabinetand said that the government was
declaring itself in a state of “permanent dialogue with the people, with
criticism and self-criticism and constructive action.” But he also suggested
that the Revolution should go into a defensive/offensive phase. The defense
should be for the safeguarding the social accomplishments of the Revolution
against the attacks form the right.He
explained, “they feel they have power and are already showing their
fangs and threatening to persecute the people. The bourgeoisie is coming to
impose a neo-liberal restoration.” The offensive phase, on the other
hand, should aim at the final defeat of the “economic war promoted by rightist
sectors seeking to generate chaos and destabilization.”

In his televised
address on Tuesday night, Madurosaidhe
would block any amnesty law for political prisoners coming from the new
parliament. He also asked for the resignation of all his cabinet ministers, as
he announced the government will be going into a deep “restructuring.”

Other government
officials also reacted to the results. The PSUV governor of Falcón State,
Stella Lugo,declaredon
Monday that “the government is going into a full state of revision.” She said
however, that the revision should focus not in the government itself, but on
how it had failed to clearly explain the effects of the economic war and who
was behind it: “The opposition won those spaces because of the economic crisis.
But we failed to explain to our people that the crisis had been planned by the
right-wing. The people yesterday drained in the ballots their discontent as a
result of the economic crisis.”

The head of the
PSUV’s electoral campaign, Jorge Rodríguez,also accepteddefeat in a press conference on
Monday. He asked for an internal revision of the government, but also blamed
the defeat on what he called an “atypical campaign.” “While we were in the
street with ideas and proposals, the opposition side didn’t even put any
candidates in the field. Instead they waged an economic and psychological war.
As president Maduro said yesterday, the right-wing didn’t win; the economic and
psychological war and all aggressions suffered by the Venezuelan people won the
elections.” Rodríguez also turned to the accusation made in the past by the
opposition againstChavismoand told the “right” not to take this
electoral win as a blank check. “If the opposition uses this electoral result
as an instrument to attack the institution, well, it will have to face us,” he
warned.

The international
campaign coordinator of the pro-government coalition, Roy Chaderton,said in a
press conferencein
Caracas that the defeat could be explained because “a part of our people,
seriously disgruntled by the sufferings progressively caused by the economic
war waged by rightist sectors, succumbed to the promises of a false change,
which is really a step backwards.”

One of the reelectedChavistadeputies, Earle Herrera,said thatthe results were “an incentive to
consolidate and defend the achievements of the first 17 years of the Bolivarian
Revolution.” He also said that his reelection had not been an essay task
because “the Venezuelan people have been the victims of sabotages of the oil
industry,guarimbas,
economic war, kidnaping attempts, and many more destabilization plots, which we
have been fighting against alongside the people.”

The current
president of the National Assembly and PSUV leader Diosdado Cabellosaidthat
the results were only a slight misstep for the revolution. But he also sent a
message to thoseChavistaswho had switch political loyalties and
voted for the opposition: “if you claim to be aChavista,
but you voted for the opposition, the facts will prove you wrong.” On Tuesday
Cabello declared that the current AN will speed through the appointment of 12
judges of the Supreme Justice Tribunal, before the new opposition dominated
assembly takes over in January 2016.

IndependentChavismoalso quickly reacted to the elections
results. The popular web forumAporrea.org, carried many articles which
backed the government’s line of blaming the economic war for the defeat (read
exampleshereandhere). Some also blamed a lack of patriotism
and loyalty by the people, asking the Lord toforgive the traitors, orclaiming thatthe “the bonds of servitude are still
stronger that those of patriotism.”

Many more pieces
however expressed doubts about the government’s explanations of an economic war
as the main culprit for the defeat and instead squarely blamed corruption and
incompetence within the government (read exampleshereandhere.)

The need for
self-criticism and doubts about the conspiratorial explanations given by the
government were the main points of several reactions from the independent left.
Franklin González, a well-known social sciences professor of theUniversidad
Central de Venezuelaand
former ambassador to Poland, Uruguay, and Greece during the Chávez
administration,wrote in a piecefor Aporrea that the government needed
to learn from the defeat and deal with the everyday problems of the people
instead of blaming everything on a conspiracy. “If a person phones a government
bank and spends an infinite time on hold, without ever reaching anyone to
answer, this has little to do with imperialism and the CIA.”

Nicmer Evans, leader
of the independentChavistapartyMarea
Socialista,said thatthe
government should fully face its responsibility for the results. “I have heard
some government officials blaming the people; instead I think the government
has no one to blame but itself. To say that the economic war is completely
responsible for this is quite frankly to be totally disconnected from reality.”

Sunday, December 6, 2015

If, as most polls
predict, the day ends with a National Assembly controlled by the opposition,
will the government accept defeat?

Here
is a story of a secret meeting of high government officials in the Fuerte Tiuna military compound on
December 4 to discuss the issue. Different versions of this story have been
circulating since yesterday in opposition web sites and social media. Note the presence
of a “Cuban general” in the meeting, and the touching Latin-American hope in
the military finally standing up against the regime:

Friday, December 4, 2015

Despite the importance
conspiracy claims have acquired in Venezuela’s political discourse, both for
the opposition and government but especially as the official rhetoric of the latter,
public opinion experts have paid little attention to the study of the use of conspiracy
theories in Venezuelan politics.

Several pollsters
have included in their surveys questions indirectly related to the beliefs in
an “economic war,” sabotages, or alleged plots to kill government officials. DATANALISIS
for example found
earlier this year that only 9.3% their respondents blamed the private sector
for food scarcities while 50% blamed the government. But late last year IVAD, found
that an impressive 19.9% of respondents believed it was true that the opposition
was planning to assassinate President Maduro. And one of Venezuela’s most
important public opinion agencies, HINTERLACES, has fully embraced the government’s
conspiratorial rhetoric as part of their explanations (see my most recent posts
on this issue here,
here,
and here.)

John M. Carey, Brenda
Nyhan, and Thomas Zeitzoff are, to my knowledge, the first to commission a
survey directly asking questions about conspiracy beliefs in Venezuela. Carey has
published some of the results of that survey in The Washington Post.

One of the most
interesting bits:

We found that belief in conspiracy theories in
Venezuela is widespread. Most notably, while key demographic characteristics
track only loosely with politics, conspiracy theory beliefs are tightly bound
up with Venezuelans’ preferences between the governing chavistas and the opposition.
Moreover, the conspiracy beliefs the government has promoted are far less
frequently endorsed than one promoted by the opposition — an indicator
that the PSUV’s attempts to avert electoral disaster are failing.

What percentage of
the population supports government conspiracy theories, or their opposition
inspired versions, seems to roughly correlate with general government and opposition
support according to recent polls. If the authors are right and “belief in
conspiracy theories in Venezuela is widespread,” did people in the last couple of years simply switch the
conspiracy theories they believe in line with
their political allegiances?